WHY PCs SHOULD GO - (2)
Close on the heels of
our interview yesterday with Arun Tambimuttu, a further analysis
on how tenable the Provincial Councils are, has followed - this
being the work of Professor G. H. Peiris, a well known
Peradeniya academic. He proceeds to debunk the familiar theories
that are adduced to justify the Provincial Council system that
was thrust upon us by one very besieged President once upon a
time, and his tormentors who since then have seen a good deal of
water go under the bridge as well...
G H. Peiris suggests that it is observable that for the most
part the arguments that are adduced to justify the PC system are
those that have to do with reasons of politics -- political
expediency -- or what is seen as the politically inevitable,
rather than anything that involves the efficacy or manageability
of the Provincial Councils themselves.
This seems to be quite odd, considering that what eventually
serves the people is the system and its usefulness as an
institution, rather than the extraneous arguments that are used
to justify it. The people care whether a rat would catch mice
and not whether the feline would be useful in terms of keeping
two fighting siblings happy, which would be a secondary
consideration at best?
As the Professor says, the fighting may be over, but there is
no evidence that the secessionist designs of some of the
extremist elements are at an end. The less that is said about
the contention that there was general acceptance of the 13th
Amendment by the polity the better, on the other hand, for the
simple reason that President J R Jayewardene's hand was forced,
due to events that followed the '83 riots, to take just one
example.
The general premise on which the PCs are recommended is the
one that they are going to be the panacea for all ills, with the
emphasis on the fact that the international community (and by
this it has to be understood that people mean India, in this
instance) can be appeased. But the Provincial Councils are in no
way organically linked to any evolving political process that
the Sri Lankan people have ownership of.
In much simpler terms -- nobody in Sri Lanka wanted the
Provincial Councils, and that is the stark, simple reality. The
fact that it is now an imposed 'reality' does not mean in any
way that the PCs neutralize all of the upstanding issues that
are worrisome.
The canard is that the PCs were a result of agreement by all
parties, but the political reality in those days immediately
past the parripu drops didn't leave much room for political
consensus. All this taken together with the fact that the PCs as
Arun Tambimuttu says are neither organically relating to peoples
needs or efficient and profitable - 'white elephant' he said -
make them totally untenable except on the basis of what can be
called extraneous considerations.
That's no basis on which to devolve power or address minority
grievances. National problems cannot be solved on the basis of
expediency or convenience, and the only tenable argument for the
Provincial Councils in effect is that the PCs as an institution
will address Tamil grievances, a doubtful proposition to begin
with.
The 13th Amendment never delivered anything, and the Indian
Peace Keeping Forces will bear testimony to that. There is no
likelihood either, that this piece of legislation will deliver
now, at this late stage.
That the war was won and there is peace is no basis for the
PCs to remain, as there is a certain category of people who
still think the losers, the LTTE that is, and not the Tamil or
Sinhala people, should write the history of the war, and the
story of the peace. This is a poor basis on which to justify a
system that seems to belong in history, this aberration called
the Provincial Councils. |